Douglas Rushkoff, long-time open source advocate (and currently a professor of Digital Economics at the City University of New York, Queens College), is calling Universal Basic Incomes "no gift to the masses, but a tool for our further enslavement.

Apparently Rushkoff was in favor of UBI until he gave a talk at Uber and discovered that executives there were also in favor of it:

Shouldn’t we applaud the developers at Uber — as well as other prominent Silicon Valley titans like Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, bond investor Bill Gross, and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman — for coming to their senses and proposing we provide money for the masses to spend? Maybe not. Because to them, UBI is really just a way for them to keep doing business as usual.

(emphasis mine)

Um, no, it wouldn't work that way -- because who would drive for Uber if they didn't have to? UBI would decimate the supply of wage-slave labor across the board -- not just Uber drivers, but fast-food workers, Walmart floor clerks, and so on, and completely destroy the plutonomy's ability to control us through our need for "jobs".

Uber is welcome to think this would help their business model, but I don't see how it would. They would have to raise wages in order to continue luring drivers, would have to raise prices in order to afford those wages -- and they suddenly wouldn't be nearly as competitive with standard taxi services that treat their employees like human beings deserving of some security.

Much the same would be true of places like Amazon and Walmart: they would no longer be able to pay people starving wages, and would have to raise their prices to the point where people (especially those with lower budgets) would no longer feel compelled to use their services because of the savings. Smaller businesses would be able to compete better.

The rest of Rushkoff's argument seems predicated on this assumption: that people currently working dead-end jobs out of desperation would continue doing so out of habit -- which misses the entire point of UBI: that it would free us to make our own choices about what work to engage in, and make capitalism live up to its fake promises of "choice" and "competition".

It amuses me that so many people are all "free market! free market! free market!" until you suggest UBI, and then suddenly they start listing reasons why the free market can never work for the employment market.

@Woozle Hypertwin "Uber is welcome to think this would help their business model, but I don’t see how it would."

It all depends on the level of UBI. The libertarian startup tech dude-bros want a level of UBI which is below starvation level, and for it to replace other safety net programs. In other words, they just want to reduce safety net programs so their ~~victims~~ ~~employees~~ "independent business owners" are still desperate for their ~~employment~~ "independent contracting business opportunities" but they get to pay them less.

But progressive supporters of UBI want a robust level of UBI well above starvation level, so a person will only go to work if it's truly voluntary. In other words, we want UBI strong enough to support anyone who doesn't want to work.

Now, we can still find some common cause. Progressive UBI supporters can still support smaller UBI programs as a stepping stone toward more robust UBI. But we should still be aware that libertarian tech-bro "allies" are disingenuous with their support.

Ahh, yeah -- to me, UBI isn't UBI unless it's either (a) a living wage or (b) an equitable distribution of production (which in our economy would be a much larger amount, I believe).

So we need to distinguish between what might be called "supplemental UBI" and "living UBI". The former is indeed a much more dubious proposition and (again) misses the point of UBI (the "B" stands for "basic", meaning it should cover basic needs).

(edit) ...so really, "supplemental UBI" has no business being called "UBI" and should be referred to as something like "USI" (universal supplemental income).

I've generally argued that UBI should be a supplement to other social programs, since nothing stops property/resource owners from simply extracting the gains of a UBI through increased rents. Without comprehensive universal healthcare, social housing, public utilities etc, any extra gains are simply swallowed up.

Yes, indeed. The big thing, to me, is universal healthcare. I don't think it's either practical or sensible to implement a UBI high enough to cover all possible health care costs. Some conditions are wildly expensive to treat. So to me, it makes sense to have safety net programs which provide more to some according to need.

But remember - the libertarian tech startup dude-bros want (an inadequate) UBI to replace those safety net programs. They just want to reduce their labor costs at the expense of the rest of society.

Agreed, and agreed. UBI must absolutely not be used as a substitute for universal healthcare.

(edit) ...but just because that's how the plutonomists are envisioning UBI does not mean that UBI is a bad idea. What they're trying to do is sell a decimation of social programs combined with a tiny stipend to replace them. That's not UBI.